File:Birds and nature in natural colors - being a scientific and popular treatise on four hundred birds of the United States and Canada (1913) (14775134453).jpg

Identifier: birdsnatureinnat02chic (find matches)
Title: Birds and nature in natural colors : being a scientific and popular treatise on four hundred birds of the United States and Canada
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors:
Subjects: Birds -- North America
Publisher: Chicago : A.W. Mumford, Publisher
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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Now, winged insects are not abroad in cold weather. Whenthey appear early spring appears with them, and at the same instant comes thephoebe. When the phoebe leaves for the South in the fall we may know thatwarm weather is over, for it will not leave as long as its food supply is buzzingabout in the sun. So it is that the phoebe marks the coming of one season andthe passing of another. The phoebes call is one of the plaintive sounds of nature, and were it notthat in early spring every call of the wild seems to hold something of cheer, thebirds note would seem to express a settled melancholy. Later in the year, whenthe green is gone and the north wind is beginning to feel its strength, the sorrowin the phoebes note smothers its sweetness. The bird is dressed like a gray nun,and with somber tones in voice and garb it may seem more than passing strangethat the phoebe is so well known and so well loved of men. The phoebes confidence in its human neighbors has gained it a place in their 260
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affection. Trust begets trust, and the phoebe will place its nest over the lintelof a mans door and there calmly and unafraid keep house until the brood isfledged and flown. It knows nothing of the querulousness of life. It has a sortof serene-mindedness which enables it to rise superior to the triviaHties and theserious troubles of the bird world. The dooryard phoebe sets an example in deportment to its close neighbors,the quarrelsome catbirds and the scolding robins—an example which it is need-less, perhaps, to say neither of these neighbors ever shows the slightest desireto follow. This Penelope of birds has not been allowed to go unsung of the poets.With some of the human singers the domestic virtues have a holding charm.Lowell lamented that Ovid could not have heard the phoebes call so that hemight have hung a legendary paean about the memory of the bird. How Birds Find Their Way Home By John B. Watson Naturalists and bird-lovers generally have interested themselves from timeim

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